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SharePoint Document ID Service Overview

The SharePoint document ID service is fantastic if you need static links to documents, regardless of where they get moved, or if their title gets changed. With the SharePoint document ID service activated, short of deleting and re-uploading your document, you’ll have a reliable link to your document available. This is great if you need to link back to any document within SharePoint 2010/2013 for a custom application, links in documents, or any other use case.

Moving/Copying Documents While Preserving Your Document IDs

When I was first working with the document ID service, I noticed there was some ambiguity as to how and when Document IDs were retained. In fact, one sentence provided by MSDN directly contradicts itself:

“The only way to retain a Document ID within sites is to use the Site Content and Structure administrative page in Site Settings while moving documents. Note that copying by this method does not retain the Document ID.”

I am finding that if I save a document from Word to a SharePoint library, then use Save As to save it again without changing the document’s metadata, then I have two documents with the same Document ID. I thought the Document ID was supposed to be unique…..

Actually, that statement from Microsoft isn’t self-contradictory. “The only way to retain a Document ID within sites is to use the Site Content and Structure administrative page in Site Settings while moving documents. Note that copying by this method does not retain the Document ID”. The important words are *moving* and *copying*. Moving a document retains the ID, but copying it is making another copy of it – so the new copy has to have a new ID.